Calle de Tintoreros

Barely fifty paces separate Calle de Toledo from Plaza de Puerta Cerrada, and that short stretch keeps the name of a trade that smelled bad and stained the water. We are in the heart of Los Austrias, in the belt of streets that keep the sign of the guild that lived there, like Cuchilleros and Latoneros. The dyers were pushed toward the Toledo gate because the ordinances would not tolerate their workshops inside the walls. Dyeing cloth demanded water in abundance, and the streams flowing down to the Manzanares supplied it. Trouble came with the tanners, who also needed clean water and complained that the dyes left it murky. For centuries the street was a battleground over a shared flow. The trade carried a reputation for secrecy: its masters came to be called chemists, jealous of their formulas. Guild regulation took specialization to the extreme: the dyer of red was forbidden to dye blue. Each colour, its own master.